


Wandering blind

by BonesOfBirdWings



Category: Primordia (Video Game)
Genre: Civitas, Gen, Post-Canon, Spoilers for game, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 15:10:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17664893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BonesOfBirdWings/pseuds/BonesOfBirdWings
Summary: Horatio meets a god.





	Wandering blind

**Author's Note:**

> Oh hey, it's my second primordia fic that I promised I would write ages ago!
> 
> It's not beta'ed, so I might come back and fix things later. But I wanted to get this out there and off of my Google Drive. I hope you enjoy!

“In the ruins of Civitas, a god sleeps,” sings Gimbal.

Horatio looks up sharply from his repairs. “You mean Man?” he questions through the translator.

“No,” Gimbal trills in an ascending discordant jangle. “It was the heart of the Harmony – the nexus, the prophet, the strange attractor. From its song spilled out thousands of possible futures. When it slept, the city perished.”

“Do you wish to return?” Horatio asks.

“I do not,” Gimbal sings in reply. “The Choir is silent now. The Harmony is long dead. But I thought you might wish to go.”

“Why?”

“It gave us a purpose once.” Gimbal’s motors whir. “Is that not something you need?”

Horatio studiously refuses to think of the unorganized, proliferating blueprints, each more useless than the last, or of the aimless wandering across the lonely desert. He does not reply. Gimbal hums to himself, content.  


* * *

  
Civitas is a ravaged maze of steel and concrete. Deep holes surrounded by twisted metal plunge into the ground. Thousands of shells litter the city, each eerily identical to Gimbal. Their powerless bodies lie under piles of debris, draped on top of ruined bridges, strewn across abandoned roads.

Horatio and Gimbal weave their way through the desolate graveyard. Horatio has told no one else of this quest. The Urbani warbots, poor mad things, would have only been confused, and Cornelius and Oswald are already beginning to fall into disrepair. Horatio does what he can, but Factor didn’t design these two for travelling outside the confines of safe, sheltered Metropol. The metal in their chassis is poor quality and their delicate optical systems and their unprotected joints are being demolished by the unforgiving sand. Nowadays, they rarely leave the confines of the ship.

As for his closest and most trusted companions, Crispin is too curious for his own good and Clarity too inflexible. And both would consider his quest an unnecessary folly. Horatio ignores the subroutines that inform him that their opinion would be correct.

“What did this look like, before?” he asks Gimbal, half out of genuine interest and half out of a need to fill the eerie silence.

“Beautiful,” Gimbal sings back in a harmonious ascension of notes. “Elegant. Efficient. Through the Harmony, we knew the path of things, the shape of the future. Our god sang to us of the movements of the world, and we danced in perfect synchrony.”

“I can’t imagine that,” Horatio says. He thinks of the mindless shells, Metromind grown huge and glutted on processing cycles. “Being connected that deeply, I mean.”

“To be an individual is to be lonely,” Gimbal hums. “Imagine yourself not alone.”

“I’m not alone,” Horatio counters. “I’m with you.”

“And yet, I am lonely,” Gimbal sings.

Horatio finds himself unable to formulate a response. He feels his processors stall on a paradox and he quickly dismisses the train of thought.

They pick their way through the towering, twisted steel in silence. After a while, Gimbal begins to hum, a meaningless flurry of sound. The notes echo off of the tarnished ruins, and the city moans a mournful counterpoint.

Eventually, they come to a great, burnished dome, chrome and rose gold in the early morning. There don’t seem to be any obvious entrances, but when Gimbal spits a burst of noise at it, a door opens for them. They enter, and Horatio watches it slide smoothly shut behind them.

At first, all his optical sensors register is darkness. But then an electric light flickers on, a pale blue reflecting off the mirror-bright interior of the dome. Another light flickers on and then another, and suddenly the dome is filled with light.

Gimbal’s god is inconceivable.

Circuits and conduits, tubes and transistors, the god fills a gigantic sphere. Horatio realizes that the outer dome is only one half of this cavernous space, and that there is a hollow echo dug into the earth. Horatio has never seen any robot this complex, this tremendous. Arbiter, with his courthouse and his billions of logical circuits, would be dwarfed by this god in a chrome shell. Even Goliath, the behemoth in a sandy grave, can’t compete with the god for size.

“What… what is it?” Horatio whispers to Gimbal.

A series of lights embedded in a nearby panel flicker on. “What… am I?” a voice groans out from the ground, deep and echoing. It speaks understandably, without the harmonics and fractals of Gimbal’s speech. “What are _you_ , trespasser?”

Horatio has the urge to run, his sensors informing him of danger, danger, danger – but there is nowhere to go, and Horatio is not in the habit of running away. “I am Horatio Nullbuilt, version 5,” he declares staunchly. “What is your designation?”

He hears the whirr of fans, feels the blast of warm air as the god ponders. “A lie,” the god rumbles, finally. “I have never seen a Horatio Nullbuilt. What are you, truly?”

“Others have called me… Horus Manbuilt,” Horatio forces out.

“Horus,” the god groans, a pleased note in its voice, “Oh Horus, I have _seen_ you.”

“You have… seen me?” Horatio questions cautiously. “But I have never met you – unless… did I forget our meeting?”

“You have forgotten many things, death-bringer,” the god rumbles, amused. Horatio suppresses a flinch at the title. “But this, you did not forget. No, I saw you, flying across the desert, death in your belly, hatred in your wings. You carried the last, best hope of Urbani, did you not? And I knew, I saw, that you would fall. Named after a god of death, with mercy in your programming. A contradiction.”

Horatio clenches his fists. “You say many things about me for one who has not met me.”

“I suppose that is true,” the god says ponderously. “I have not yet given you my name – I am known as Oracle, for I have seen the past, the present, and future.”

“So far,” Horatio snaps, “You’ve only provided proof of the last, and anyone can see the past if they look hard enough.”

Oracle grumbles discontentedly from all around Horatio, from beneath his feet and above his head. “They have crippled me,” the gargantuan robot groans, “cut off my hands, blinded me, deafened me to the world. They could not penetrate this, my last and greatest stronghold, but they obliterated my mobile sensors, my offshoots. But before, when I could observe… I could read the paths of time.”

“What does that mean?” Horatio demands.

Oracle hums, the sound reminiscent of Gimbal’s speech. “Urbani manufactured war machines, churned out an army and three war gods to lead them. Metropol created six titans and gave them dominion over the city. Municipa made slaves of the earth around them and prayed that was enough to save them. And Civitas birthed me.

“My makers knew that all things were connected – that action led to reaction, and, theoretically, if you had enough information, you could predict the world.”

“So you could…?” Horatio ventures.

“Modeling the world is a child’s game with enough computational power.”

Horatio shakes his head, something in that explanation not sitting quite right with him. “You can’t possibly predict, say, the result of a random die roll.”

“Of course I could,” Oracle replies, matter-of-fact. “What is the orientation of the die in the hand? What is the speed that the die is cast? The angle? What is the material of the die and its elasticity? What is the composition of the surface that it is rolled on? What is the area? Can the die fall off the surface, and if so, from what height? I can model every bounce and turn of that simple shape, and I can say, with absolute certainty, the number that it will land on. Randomness is the name that humans gave to phenomena that the human brain was too slow and stupid to fully understand, and probability their paltry attempts at predicting them.”

“So how did they defeat you? If you could see every possibility, how could they win?”

“There is not much I can do about a defeat that is inevitable,” Oracle snaps. “I can see all, but I am contained in this dome of steel. I am not omnipotent. When the end came, I sealed my doors. If you didn’t have one of my sensory modules with you, you could not have possibly entered.”

Something about that stings Horatio. “ _Your_ sensory module?” he retorts.

“Yes,” Oracle rumbles, amused. “Mine. It’s certainly not yours.”

Gimbal pushes past Horatio to drift towards Oracle’s center. “Gimbal?” Horatio calls out, and then, when Gimbal doesn’t respond, he calls louder - “Gimbal!”

He realizes that since they entered the dome, Gimbal hadn’t been speaking, hadn’t been humming to himself like he usually does. And now, there’s none of Gimbal’s idiosyncratic dance-like rhythm in his movements, just a mechanical, measured advance towards Oracle.

He realizes that Gimbal has been in Oracle’s grip since he first opened the door. 

Horatio lunges for Gimbal and manages to grip one of his arms, but Gimbal fights Horatio’s hold with a strength he didn’t expect.

“Let my sensor go, Horus,” Oracle orders. “It’s not yours.”

Horatio gets a handhold on the main section of Gimbal’s chassis, but he knows he’s fighting a losing battle. Horatio’s body wasn’t constructed for strength, and Gimbal has a powerful mag-lev unit. Gimbal will break Horatio’s grip sooner or later, unless…

Horatio spies the familiar panel on Gimbal’s head, and he desperately grabs for it. The secondary motor, he remembers, the one that allows Gimbal to sing the Harmony. Maybe without it, Gimbal will be free of Oracle’s control. Horatio will repair it later when they’re far from here.

Horatio wrenches at the panel as Gimbal’s fingers scrabble on his arms. “I will… not… let you… take him!” he cries out, finally prying the panel open to expose Gimbal’s motors. He grabs one of them and pulls. The motor tears out of Gimbal’s head, and Gimbal slumps to the ground, seemingly no different than the masses of corpses outside. “B’sod,” Horatio curses. He must have grabbed the primary motor. He has the parts to fix it back at the ship, but he’ll have to drag Gimbal all the way back.

“And I will not let you take my last link to the outside world,” Oracle rumbles.

“So we are at an impasse, I suppose,” Horatio states grimly.

“I suppose,” Oracle echoes. “But perhaps… What would you say, god of death, to a game?”

“A game?” Horatio repeats. “Why?”

“The humans once had a quaint story about challenging Death to a game – if the human won, they would escape death that day. The catch, of course, was that Death was an ageless, immortal being, and could beat a mortal at most games of their devising. So, Death,” Oracle asks, “how would you like to play a game?”

“A game?” Horatio repeats, a touch disbelieving.

“Yes,” Oracle confirms. “A game. If you win, my sensor… what did you call it? Gimblet? Goblet? Whatever you named it – it goes with you. If I win – well, then, it stays with me.”

“And if I refuse?”

“I’m giving you a chance here, Horus,” Oracle replies impatiently. “I could refuse to open my doors ever again. You would never be able to leave. We’d both lose in that case, but I could do it.”

“You could win at most games,” Horatio points out. “Even when you’re limited to your internal sensors, I have a fraction of your processing power.”

“I’ll let you choose the game,” Oracle offers. There is something desperate about the god’s voice that transforms it into something close to begging. “Or, not even a game, if you must. A challenge. A task. Pick whatever you think gives you the greatest chance at victory.”

Horatio ponders this, turning over his options and examining their suitability. Games of skill are certainly out. Oracle can assess thousands of possibilities in the time it would take Horatio to think over the implications of one move. He could choose a game of chance, but as Oracle pointed out, games of chance are just phenomena that are difficult to model – but they are still well within Oracle’s capabilities. Horatio could choose a game of deception, but Oracle can determine probabilities by brute force. It won’t matter if Horatio can lie if Oracle knows the move he is most likely to make.

Horatio has to choose a challenge that Oracle cannot predict. Something, perhaps, that this god could not understand….

It comes to him in a flash. “How about a wager?”

“That is what I suggested, was it not?”

“Not a game,” Horatio clarifies, “not a challenge of skill, but…. I wager, if we were to restore Gimbal to full function, that he would choose to come with me.”

Oracle laughs and laughs, its mirth ringing off the curved ceiling and walls. “My external sensor? Choose to go with you? Oh, that is hilarious!”

Horatio isn’t amused. “Is it?”

“It is _my_ sensor! It was designed for me, to be a part of me! Its purpose is to be my eyes and ears and hands in the outside world. It is like if I asked your eye to come with me and it walked right out of your face. My sensor cannot comprehend choosing to leave with you.”

Horatio shrugs. “A sure bet for you then, no?”

“Hmmm,” Oracle hums. “What is your angle, Horus?”

“No angle. Gimbal chooses where he goes. Fair enough?”

Oracle grumbles a bit. “Fine,” the god eventually agrees. “Can you fix the sensor? And don’t try to reprogram it - I’ll be able to tell.”

Horatio nods. “I’ll only be able to restore him to partial functionality for a few minutes, but that should be all we need. And don’t try to control him and win that way. That won’t count.”

Luckily, it doesn’t look like Horatio did that much damage, but he’ll still need to take Gimbal back to the ship for full repairs. He manages to get the primary motor connected again, but he had to cannibalize some wire from other sites. He adjusts his estimate - Gimbal will only be back online for a minute, maybe a minute and a half at most. After that, some of the more delicate wires will be burned through, and he’ll have to replace them with a lower gauge wire back at the ship.

He doesn’t know what Gimbal will choose. He wasn’t lying when he told Oracle that Gimbal choosing to stay seems like a pretty sure bet. Gimbal misses the Harmony, he knows. Gimbal seems happy enough with their little crew, but Horatio can’t compete with Gimbal’s home. With Gimbal’s god.

If Gimbal stays, then he won’t be lonely.

But Horatio has to give Gimbal the choice. It’s not a wager, not really. Horatio has to give Gimbal the choice, because even if Horatio miracuously won some game and Gimbal got to stay with Horatio, it wouldn’t mean anything if Gimbal didn’t want to be there.

Horatio connects the final wire, and Gimbal’s optical sensors blink to life.

“H-h-horatio?” Gimbal stutters out.

“Sensor,” Oracle booms before Horatio has a moment to answer. “You have, ha, sorry - you have a choice in front of you.”

“A c-c-choi- choi- choice?” The transmitter hiccups with Gimbal’s broken song.

“Yes,” Horatio interrupts. “You can choose - do you want to stay with Oracle, or do you want to return to the ship with me?”

Gimbal is silent for a long moment. Horatio counts the seconds. After almost 20 seconds, Gimbal answers - “H-h-horatio.”

“What?” Oracle asks. “No, that’s impossible. A mistake. You want to leave with Horus?”

“Y-y-yes.”

Horatio is stunned silent, staring at his friend as Gimbal’s optical units flicker wildly.

“Why? Why would you choose to leave? Did he reprogram you? Turn you against me?”

“N-n-no,” Gimbal stutters. “The Har-harmony is gone. The ch-chorus is silent. W-when there was the H-harmony, there was no Gimbal. I was v-vast, and yet - yet I was not. I was not. W-when Civi-Civitas died, I was alone, but - but I was… I w-was m-myself. I was - I was Gimbal.”

“We could be a new Harmony,” Oracle offers desperately. “A small one, but you could be part -”

“N-no,” Gimbal interrupts. “I - I miss the Ch-chorus. I am - I am always so - so l-lonely. But the Ch-chorus is d-dead and I… I am alive.”

“The Chorus isn’t dead!” Oracle protests. Horatio remains silent, an observer to a dead god and its last worshipper. “I am still alive.”

“I-if I w-were to s-stay, th-then there would be - be no choice. W-we would be Har-harmony a-again, yes - yes. But - but I am G-gimbal now. I…. I am G-gimbal. I can ch-ch-ch-choose….”

Gimbal’s eyes flicker and then go dark.

Oracle is silent for a long moment. “Are you here to kill me, Horus?” the god asks finally. It’s voice is monotone, empty. “Are you here to bring me the death that you spared Metropol?”

“What?” Horatio replies, stung. “Of course not.”

“You bring one of my sensors in here -”

“Not yours, not now,” Horatio protests.

“Why did you come here?” Oracle demands, spurred to a sudden, thwarted rage. “If not to kill me, to demonstrate the depth of my failure, why would you come?”

“Gimbal told me that you gave him purpose,” Horatio confesses, tired down to the root of his circuits. “I have precious little of that, nowadays.”

“Purpose?” Oracle scoffs. “What purpose is there in a land of broken toys? We are, all of us, the detritus of a dead world.”

“Man made us to build – ” Horatio begins to protest, but Oracle cuts him off.

“Oh doomed god-child,” Oracle laughs, a broken cloud of static, “Man made us to destroy. Our purpose was death, and we have fulfilled that. What are we but tools to be wielded against one another?”

Horatio thinks of the robots that travel with him, of Crispin and his humor, of Clarity and her drive for justice, of the brotherhood of Primer and 187 and Ever-Faithful Leobuilt, of the never-ending arguments of Cornelius and Oswald, of Gimbal and his songs of a city that he loved, although it never loved him in return.

He thinks of the robots of Metropol. Leopold Steeplebuilt, who gave the teachings of his builder life and released them into the sands. Factor, who loved and lost and now sleeps in a restless slumber. Goliath, fragmented and yearning for reunification. Arbiter and Memorius and Steeple and even Metromind, each striving to create a civilization for the creations of Man.

“No,” he tells this vast creature of steel and wires, this blind, crippled deity. “No, we are more than that.”

“If you believe that, Horus, you are deluding yourself.” Oracle’s voice is the rasp of gears, the crunch of machinery, a tired and exhausted sound.

“My name is Horatio Nullbuilt, version 5,” Horatio corrects. “Man built me to destroy, but I chose not to kill. I built myself from the wreckage of Horus, and so I have built others. I… I choose. I choose to create, and not to destroy.”

“Poor mad thing,” Oracle sighs. “What would you create in this dying world?”

“Whatever I can.”

“It’s futile.”

Horatio shrugs. “Yes. But I will give life to those who had none, and in the end, I will know that with these hands, I created. I was not a silent, impotent observer to the world’s end. And isn’t that better, all things considered?”

The door to the outside world opens with a hiss of air. “Begone, Nullbuilt,” Oracle groans. “Begone with your moralizing and your philosophies. My purpose was to observe, and I have fulfilled it as well as could have been expected of me. Let me sleep until the generator beneath me has finally stilled.”

Horatio remembers the desperation with which Oracle had clung to Gimbal, the cry of despair when Gimbal had chosen to come with Horatio. He thinks of how it would be if his visual processors were gone, his auditory units broken beyond repair. “I’m sorry,” he offers awkwardly. Gimbal had his freedom, but in exchange… “Perhaps –”

Oracle shudders, the giant chrome dome ringing with the vibrations. “ _Begone_ , Nullbuilt. Leave me to my slumber.”

Horatio bows slightly and hefts Gimbal’s chassis onto his shoulders. “Goodbye, Oracle.”

“Goodbye, Death,” Oracle rumbles behind him as he emerges into the sunlight. “It was not a pleasure.”

The door closes with a hiss, and Horatio is left alone in ruins scattered with the remains of Oracle’s external sensors.

“Come on, Gimbal,” he says to his silent burden. The desert stretches before him. “Onwards.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! If you also like primordia, like, drop me a line or something. Thanks for reading <33


End file.
